Leaving Is The Only Way Out

I'm not sayin' I have all the answers

And I don't care who's right or wrong

I'm tryin' to pick up the pieces already fallen

And put them back where they belong

So slow down your horses

Stop draggin' me around

And if cryin' is the only way into your heart

Then leavin' is the only way out

Shania Twain - Leaving Is The Only Way Out.

Meredith leaned back in her chair with a heavy sigh, one which she couldn't hold in for any longer. She was exhausted; so tired that she could easily have fallen asleep where she had sat, but her mind forced her not to no matter how much her body longed to crawl under the duvet and never resurface. She'd been sat in the same position for hours now, and her lower body was starting to feel numb from the lack of movement, causing a ripple of pins and needles on her thighs when she did shift on the chair. Still, the blatenent discomfort was keeping her awake so she couldn't bring herself to move. She knew that once she had, her mind would wander onto something else, and with a situation like this to hand she couldn't afford that kind of distraction.

Her eyes were fixed firmly on the other side of the room, the room that was not her own and one that she shouldn't be in at such a late hour in fear of waking the occupant. The walls were a pale yellow colour, blending with the pine furniture and the matching soft carpet, bedsheets and curtains. The small bed was across the room from her, tucked up against the corner and spread out along the length of the wall. This room was unrecognisable from the previous year, not just in the amount of playthings which had multiplied and evolved with time, but with the recent surge in sales of Rick's first book, he'd been adamant that first of all, his darling girl would be spoiled.

He hadn't meant Meredith.

It wasn't the small embroidered ducks on the duvet spread that held her gaze, as they had done when they first purchased them a month ago, but rather the small child that lay curled up beneath them. Her mind was racing as she did nothing more than stare, her thoughts compensating for the lack of life shown in her limbs. Although, whilst shek new that nothing was going to come of the staring at that it wasn't going to present her with an answer, she didn't know what else she could do. The scenarios playing inside her head were making it hard to seperate her maternal worries from real life. Whenever she thought of a 'what if', a way to work around what her mind was telling her and assure herself that she was a perfect fit in this life, she was compromised by the idealistic and highly tempting images that had allured her since she was a teenager.

The child in the bed, her child, was an adorable girl. Tiny, even for her age, but with eyes that shined like diamonds and a smile that lit up the room. She had her grandmother's flaming red hair, her father's dimples and love for all things fascination, always wanting to learn, and her mother's...well, she had her mother's gender. Other than that, little Alexis was absolutely nothing like her mother. Somedays that made her sad, but on other days it was a Godsend. As a child, Meredith had been spoilt, bratty and prone to trantrums, and Alexis was one of the easiest children to care for. At three years old, she could already dress herself, feed herself making less mess on the table than her father, and speak words that she was still convinced she wouldn't understand for another ten years. She was wise, knowledgeable, and yet had such an innocence that to look at her now was heartbreaking.

Alexis had not been planned. It was a reality that was impossible to ignore. Her and Rick had been young, and in love, or lust at least, and hadn't always considered the consequences of what they could combine into. When she'd told Rick, she'd imagined a scenario that didn't end with them together. She hadn't expected him to be thrilled, to have stepped up and happily taken on the role of a father to their daughter, and for him to have proposed when she was six months pregnant. They had managed to create themselves a small family, and for a while, it had worked extremely well.

To Rick and Alexis, it was still working well.

A hand on her shoulder startled her back into the here and now, much to her immediate distaste, and took her away from her thoughts. However, once she shook herself and looked back at Alexis her heart dropped into her stomach again. A mother shouldn't be doing this, she told herself. A mother shouldn't even be considering this. She looked up, following the hand on her shoulder up to the face looking down at her with a soft, sleepy smile.

"Coming to bed?" Rick asked in a gentle voice, just above a whisper.

She nodded, her voice equally low. "In a while."

Rick nodded, but Meredith didn't see it as she looked back to the tiny lump under the yellow blankets that was their daughter. "You're going to wake her up if you stay much longer," he pointed out. "You know what she's like."

"I know, I won't be long," she said, taking a deep breath and putting her hand over his. "You go to bed, I'll be along in a bit."

Rick nodded and left the room, not closing the door to keep the light out of Meredith was going to be exiting soon. She didn't hear their own bedroom door close either. She waited another fifteen minutes, knowing by now exactly how long it took for her husband to fall asleep. She then stood up, and looked at the golden band that encircled her ring finger. It captivated her for a moment, gleaming in the light from the hall outside, and then she removed it from her hand, placing it down on the bedside table next to her sleeping daughter. From beside the chair she was sitting on she took up a duffle bag, filled with all her essentials and approached her daughter once more. She kissed her forehead, watching the child's nose crinkle, and then left the room for the last time. She didn't hesitate at the door. Nor in the hall. Nor at the front door when she closed it behind her and said goodbye to her marriage, her family, and her New York life.

Rick stared down into his coffee, willing with an incredible force that it could take away all his problems. It was what he used to believe as a child, watching the drink he believed the be magical take away his mother's hangover within thirty minutes. It was a magical drink, she'd tell him, designed for the morning after an after-show party. It wasn't doing much good for him though, it was barely even quenching his thirst. He wanted to believe in so many things this morning. He wanted to believe that he was still sleeping, and that this was all a horrible dream. He wanted to believe that he knew Meredith well enough to think that she would walk through the door in a moment with a thousand shopping bags. But the door never opened, her face never appeared.

She was really gone.

He'd gone in to check on Alexis that morning and found her happily playing with her dolls in bed. On Saturdays, they didn't get up before noon, and she loved the idea of hanging around in her pyjamas all morning, so she was occupied for now at least. But he'd seen the golden glint beside her bed and recognised it immediately as his wife's wedding ring. The more he looked around, the more things he noticed missing - her favourite perfume, her hairbrush, some of the newer outfits she'd bought, the majority of her underwear. All gone.

His wife had left him, and the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to fall face-first into the coffee mug.

"Richard?"

His mother's voice alerted him to his presence, and he wasn't sure when exactly she'd let herself into his apartment, but was glad for it all the same. He'd called her in a rush, not knowing anyone else in New York he'd want to call that early on a Saturday about such a subject, and luckily she was in town for an audition. "Mother," he mumbled, as she came and sat next to him and immediately drew him into his arms as if he were still six years old and having trouble at school.

"Where's Meredith?" she asked, only knowing from her phone call that Meredith was gone.

"I don't know," he answered.

"She didn't leave anything?"

He shook his head. "She left about half her wardrobe, that's about it."

"She didn't mention anything previously?"

He thought back over the past few days, but couldn't bring himself to recall anything that suggested she was leaving. He didn't even know that she was unhappy. "Alexis doesn't know," he mumbled.

"Oh, Richard," Martha sighed.

"I couldn't tell her, mother," he told her. "What am I even supposed to say? How do you tell a three-year-old that her mother left her in the middle of the night?"

"She needs to know," she told him. "Sooner rather than later. It will be hard, and she'll hardly take it well, but she needs to know."

Rick sighed, a small whimper in the noise as he ran his fingers roughly through his hair. "What am I going to do?" he asked. "I'm twenty-five years old. How am I supposed to raise a child by myself."

At this, Martha waved a hand with a 'pft!'. "Son, you've been raising that child by yourself since she day she was born," she pointed out to him. "Though it's awful when a parent leaves, in this case, I am honestly glad that Alexis will be staying with her father rather than her mother." Rick didn't look convinced, so she took her son's hand. "What would have hurt you more, waking up and finding Meredith gone, as you have done, or finding out that she had taken Alexis with her?"

Just the mere idea sent his stomach into his throat, and suddenly the coffee tasted like bile on his tongue.

"That's what I thought," Martha noted, watching his reaction. The sound of Alexis singing to her dolls reached them in the kitchen and the innocence bought a cringed look to her father's face. Martha looked at her son sympathetically. "We'll work things out, Richard," she assured him.

He sighed, wished that his mother was right, and then they waited for the inevitable moment where Alexis came out of her bedroom and looked for her mother.